Hedging Pragmatically in Written Political Discourse: A Study of Trump’s Letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives on the Occasion of His Impeachment Trial

Ali, Abid Hmood

doi:10.25130/jls.5.4.1.7

Hedging Pragmatically in Written Political Discourse: A Study of Trump’s Letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives on the Occasion of His Impeachment Trial

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Abid Hmood Ali

Tikrit University, College of Education for Human Sciences

10.25130/jls.5.4.1.7

Abstract

The current study attempts to investigate how hedges are employed in written political discourse. Its main aim is to identify the hedging devices used in Trump’s letter to the speaker of the House of Representatives on the occasion of his impeachment trial. The study aims at determining the types, forms and pragmatic functions of the hedges in the letter under study. To achieve the aims of the study, an eclectic model of which is composed of Hyland’s (1996) and (2005) is used in the analysis of data. The most important conclusions of the study are: the most commonly type of hedges used in Trump’s letter is content-oriented hedges, reader pronouns is the most widely used form of hedges, and the most commonly pragmatic function used is seeking the reader's involvement.